Millions Bracing for Cutoff of Unemployment Checks

More than two million jobless Americans are entering the holiday season seized with varying levels of foreboding, worry or even panic over what lies ahead as they cope with the expected cutoff of their unemployment benefits.

Their economic fates are now connected on a taut string to skirmishing between Democrats and Republicans in Washington over whether to extend federal financing for unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

Tuesday marked the expiration of a pair of federal programs that had extended unemployment benefits anywhere from 34 to 73 weeks on top of the 26 weeks already provided by the states.

The federal extensions have been customary in past recessions and their aftermath, but they have become ensnared lately in political jousting over the soaring budget deficit.

Some recipients have already received their final checks. If the impasse remains unresolved, others will see their payments lapse in the coming days or weeks, depending on how long they have been receiving benefits.

By the end of December, more than two million are set to lose their extended benefits, according to estimates by the National Employment Law Project, and about a million more by the end of January.

While benefits have lapsed twice before in this downturn because of Congressional bickering — the last time, in June and July, payments were interrupted for 51 days— advocates for the unemployed are worried that if the issue is not resolved by the current lame-duck session of Congress, prospects in the next, with Republicans ascendant, are even slimmer.

That would mean a new reality facing legions of people across the country: a cutoff after six months of benefits for anyone out of work.

MICHAEL LUO

In Washington, Partisan Gridlock

WASHINGTON — With jobless benefits starting to run out for up two million of the long-term unemployed, Senate Democrats this week repeatedly tried to bring up a bill that would prolong aid for a year, only to hear Republicans object and block the legislation. Democrats, in turn, rejected Republican counterproposals.

In both the Senate and House, Democrats are pressing the case for jobless aid on two fronts, arguing that it is both the moral and humanitarian thing to do — especially during the holiday season — and that it is also an effective policy mechanism to help stimulate the economy.

“Unemployment insurance, the economists tell us, returns $2 for every dollar that is put out there,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said in a floor speech on Thursday. “People need the money. They spend it immediately for necessities. It injects demand into the economy. It helps reduce the deficit.”

Republicans said they would be willing to extend benefits provided that Democrats agree to cut spending elsewhere to cover the cost, sparking indignation among Democrats who noted that the Republicans never insist on offsetting the revenue lost through tax cuts.

A deal to extend the aid is likely, but only as part of a wider agreement on the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, and it is unclear how long that will take.

One exchange on the Senate floor, between Senators Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, was emblematic of the debate.

Photo

Volunteers packed bags of groceries Friday at the Community Food and Outreach Center in Orlando, Fla.Credit
Todd Anderson for The New York Times

“In my state of Rhode Island, people are in a very serious situation,” Mr. Reed said. “They are struggling to stay in their homes, to educate their children, to deal with the challenges of everyday life. They have worked hard and long all their lives, and now they are finding it difficult to get a job.”

Mr. Reed noted that Congress has always extended jobless benefits in times of high unemployment.

“We have always done it on an emergency basis because it truly is an emergency,” he said. “We have always determined that it was necessary to get the money to the people who could use it, who needed it desperately, and we should do that again.”

Moments later, when Mr. Reed asked for the Senate’s unanimous agreement to consider his bill, Mr. Brown was waiting. “I object,” Mr. Brown said. “And I have a pay-for alternative on which I would like to speak.”

Mr. Brown proposed that money previously appropriated but not yet spent be redirected for the jobless aid. “The recent job numbers in Massachusetts reflect over 280,000 people unemployed in my state alone — over 8 percent of the Massachusetts work force. As the senator from Rhode Island mentioned — and I know Rhode Island well; I eat in Federal Hill regularly — the unemployment is much higher there.”

Mr. Brown noted that within just six and a half hours benefits would start to run out. “I don’t want this to happen,” he said. “If we fail to act today, 60,000 Bay Staters will see their unemployment checks evaporate at the end of the week.”

Mr. Brown then asked unanimous consent for the Senate to take up his proposal. Mr. Reed, however, was waiting. “I object,” he said.

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It is the responsibility of the center’s staff to try to help them deal with this new level of doing without.

“We already turn off the AC and pretty much eat those dollar noodles with the seasoning packet,” said Jacynth Allen, who at 47 finds herself for the first time among the long-term unemployed.

Workers here are preparing to increase by about 30 percent the amount of food they have available, just one example of preparations occurring across the country as social service providers brace for what they expect to be a surge of people in need.

With the memory of the onslaught that occurred when unemployment benefits lapsed over the summer, the center is planning one of its most aggressive food drives ever, along with a campaign to drum up donations and volunteers, said Andrae Bailey, the executive director.

The organization is also planning to invite governmental agencies and other nonprofits to set up on campus to offer assistance.

“These families don’t know how to navigate through an economic crisis,” he said. “Their support system is already depleted. They have nothing left to sell and no one left to ask. And now they are going to lose the $250 they use for housing and food.”

Photo

Frank Sanders, 64, a Vietnam veteran who was laid off in May 2009, at his home this week in Fairburn, Ga.Credit
Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

It is among the center’s aisles of free bread and deeply discounted packaged food that the simple daily challenge of being newly poor shows itself. Trying to put together a meal when even a dime makes a difference is bewildering for someone who used to stroll down the aisle at the grocery store with only a casual interest in coupons.

How do you plan a menu around a random collection that might include a tube of anchovy paste, a can of mandarin orange slices and a slightly crushed box of Ritz crackers?

The relative value of the little things a household takes for granted — plastic garbage bags, toothpaste — must be weighed against an extra box of cereal or a package of off-brand cookies that might soften the situation, if only for a few bites.

Troy O’Dell, 42, rejected a dented family-size can of tomato soup the food bank had marked at $1.29. He knew he could get it at a grocery outlet for 89 cents.

Mr. O’Dell resents having to even think about the price of a can of soup. He’s a dry waller who was never out of work until a couple of years ago. He figures he has one unemployment check left.

He says he will have to get even smarter about stretching his food bank supplies to feed him and his 14-year-old daughter.

The deer he shot a few days ago will help. With his last unemployment check, he plans to buy an $8 seasoning packet so he can make 40 pounds of venison jerky.

“That way, it’ll last longer,” he said.

KIM SEVERSON

Mounting Bills And Pessimism

FAIRBURN, Ga. — Frank Sanders can visualize how his tidy, green-shuttered mobile home will deteriorate if he does not regain unemployment benefits.

His living room furniture? It is scheduled to be repossessed. The kitchen? He is already stockpiling canned food donated by churches. The mobile home itself? By next month, he will have spent his last rent money, and then Mr. Sanders, a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran who lost his job as a welder last year, is bracing for the possibility of homelessness.

“We’re running low on time,” said Mr. Sanders, a bulky former Air Force parachutist who lives with his disabled wife, Ruth, in this small Atlanta suburb. Their monthly income of $948 in Social Security benefits does not cover her medical expenses, let alone their car, phone, rent, food or electrical costs, he said. “The bills just keep piling up.”

Add to that grim outlook a new concern: This week is the first since Mr. Sanders lost his job in May 2009 that they will not receive $323 in government unemployment benefits. Unless Congress approves a measure extending federal assistance for the long-term unemployed, they will be among more than two million jobless Americans who will lose their benefits by the end of this month. So there is a special urgency to Mr. Sanders’s daily trips around town in his Chevy Trailblazer, applying for jobs at fast-food restaurants, construction sites and retail stores. An artist by hobby, he also paints landscapes on common items — milk jugs, vinyl records, buzz saws — and sells them for $15.

Such hardship is humbling. Raised in a working-class family and employed all of his life until last year, Mr. Sanders went to a food bank for a donated Thanksgiving turkey. “I’m supposed to be the provider, I’m supposed to be taking care of the situation,” he said. “There I am begging for food.”

He lost his job at a factory that welds equipment for bulldozers in Lafayette, Ind., amid a companywide downsizing. His wife’s daughter lives in Georgia, so they moved here this year, hoping he could find work as a carpenter or construction worker, but so far he has not received any offers. For “good luck,” he recently placed a large golden Buddha statue in his living room. But he admits that he is pessimistic. The state unemployment rate is 10 percent. Every evening, he watches C-Span, hoping for news that Congress has passed the extensions, and ends up yelling at the television.

“I’m wondering where the next dollar is going to come from, or the next meal,” he said. “When I’m not looking for work, my day is filled with a lot of pacing back and forth.”

ROBBIE BROWN

A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2010, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Millions Bracing for Cutoff of Unemployment Checks. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe